Emerson to build NBN facilities

Ten data centres, 12 months, $AU100 million

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Emerson Network Power has become the latest company to sign on for major National Broadband Network contracts, with a $AU100 million contract to build network facilities centres.

The ten facilities Australia-wide will house network management, core network equipment, and NBN staff, with two facilities in each of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.

The facilities will also terminate backhaul arriving at capital cities from locations serviced by NBN Co backhaul. These will be limited to a small number of remote locations; in most circumstances, retail service providers need to secure their own backhaul from the NBN point of interconnect (POI) to their own networks. However, where NBN access networks don’t have competitive backhaul available, NBN Co will ship the customer traffic back to the capital city facilities.

The centres will also act as aggregation points for NBN Co’s on-network signaling and network management.

Emerson is to supply the facilities’ structures, power, cooling, and will be responsible for design and construction.

The contact to Emerson is the latest of many, as the NBN project gathers pace. In June, Ericsson and Silcar were awarded rollout contracts for the network worth nearly $AU900 million in total, and back in March, IBM won a contract worth $AU200 million for operational support systems. ®